Forex On Five Hours A Week: How To Make Money Trading On Your Own Time
By Raghee Horner
Would you like to trade forex only for a few hours a week and still make good profit? Do you have a full time job, and have been wondering how you could add forex trading to it without disturbing your job? If that described you, then you have to listen to Raghee Horner.
Raghee is top class forex trader and teacher who has helped hundreds of people with her effective and profit pulling trading systems. And in her book, Forex On Five Hours A Week: How To Make Money Trading On Your Own Time she pours out her proven strategies to help anyone make lots of profit trading forex only for a couple of hours in a week.
This book will not only help you increase your income through trading forex, it will also save you time for other things. Here is an excerpt from it, enjoy!
Keep Your Trading In Perspective!
I don’t know about you, but I have never wanted to work on Wall Street, or in an exchange, or for a bank, or to be a fund manager, or manager other people’s money for that matter (by the way, I tried it and hated it). That’s not to say those are not important or fulfilling jobs. It’s just that I have never been much of an employee.
I’ve always wanted to work for myself, and that really is just my way of saying I want to dictate when and how hard I work.
You’re probably not that different from me. Who doesn’t want that freedom? That’s what trading is to me, freedom. There are plenty of ways to make good living in this world. But I can’t throw a 90 mile-an-hour fast ball, I can’t sing or dance, and I always kick myself for not thinking of putting bird seed in a balloon and selling it as a stress reliving grip ball. Oh well.
So, it ain’t just the money! Trust me when I tell you that trading is the hardest way to make an easy living I can think of.
You don’t need to trade forex full time to start making money
I am part-time trader. I think that people who are employed as traders are professional traders or full-time traders, but there goes your freedom out the window. I have never been great at answering to anyone as my mother will attest. And I do like to sleep in from time to time, as a few of my friends will attest when they have called me in the morning only to wake me up.
So really by that definition I am a part-time trader and darn proud of it. Does that mean that I treat my trading as a hobby? Definitely not! But consider that forex, which is the main topic of this book, is a 24-hour market.
I don’t know about you, but I like to sleep, cook, train, golf, play a little Wii, read a book, maybe write a book, talk with friends, do a little blogging, dive, ride my motorcycle, go out to lunch with friends, go fishing, travel, you know, have a life! So obviously there are going to be times that I can’t be in front of my computer and more often, don’t want to be!
Let me tell you now that I was not always so enlightened. When I first started getting into trading, I was totally addicted. Addicted to the action, the charting, getting my hands on everything and anything trading related, and going at it 16 hours a day. No joke. And I’ll tell you the whole tale later, but suffice to say, I’m a chart junkie.
My trading wasn’t better with my eyes glued to dual monitors. My friendships weren’t better, and I’m pretty sure my husband thought I had lost my mind. Although he still might be holding that opinion.
So, I eventually unplugged and embraced the life of a part-time trader. You can and should do the same.
There are a few things that will make it clear once you understand them. Just a few simple things are all you are going to need. I will show you how use time frames to your advantage as well as the prime trading times for each pair. I’m going to lay it all out for you.
The forex is a 24-hour market, so do full-time traders ever sleep?
Okay, so now you may be thinking, “Raghee, won’t I miss trades if I only watch the market part-time?â€
And I will answer, “Yeah. You, me, and everyone else.â€
Even full-time traders have to sleep, eat and well… you know. And believe me when I tell you that I have known quite a few traders with computers in their restroom. So trading forex is all about picking your spots and knowing when the market is most likely to move.
This luckily is not completely unpredictable. Markets, like people, have a natural daily rhythm. As a trader, I count on it. In many ways, trading forex is the trading the opinions of seven different financial centers: Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Frankfurt, London and New York.
These seven represents the major financial centers around the world, and each has its own psychology, volatility, liquidity, and rhythm. You can find a time to trade. It’s really going to be more a function of your personal schedule. I will tell you though that all financial centers are not equal.
Some are more important (New York) and larger (London) than others. Since the six most traded pairs are U.S. dollars – correlated (they reflect strength or weakness versus the greenback) – EUR/USD, USD/JPY, GRP/USD, USD/CHF, USD/CAD, AUS/USD – the “best†trading time is the overlap between Frankfurt, London and New York. Which makes the forex “prime time†1AM. EST to noon EST.
What if you can’t be in front of your computer then? I’ll show you how to trade it anyway, and that goes for any financial center. With proper and well-thought out order entry and a firm grasp of time frames you can handle just about any market.
Employee Mindset
When you become a trader, you become your own boss. Now for entrepreneurs or those of you with a natural entrepreneurial spirit, this will not be a major adjustment. For those of you who have been employed by someone else for most of your adult life – I won’t kid you – that first step is a lulu.
Traders live in the results economy, which is to say that we get paid not for time spent doing something but for results and results only. Believe me when I tell you that eh market does not care one bit that you or I spent six months or a year learning how to trade, or that we spent the better part of an evening analyzing charts or news and fundamentals or that you got up at 2A.M.to trade Europe.
Notice I didn’t say “we†in that last sentence, because I just don’t get up at those silly hours of the morning. Not being rewarded for effort and time is difficult for many new traders, and the lack of return for the hours can be very frustrating for the unprepared. So here I am – preparing you.
This is a particularly tough habit for people with the employee mindset to overcome because time spent doing something is the measuring stick they are familiar with. If that isn’t enough, there are other considerations, too.
It Is Not About Simplicity
It’s not my objective to make trading sound simple and easy, because it’s not. It’s not because the skill is particularly difficult, but rather that we humans love to complicate everything. There are challenges to trading just as in any other skill you are trying to acquire. I mean really, who here plays golf?
Could anything be harder or more painful with the exception of childbirth? If you don’t practice what I am going to teach you or think you are going to buy a piece of software that tells you what to do, then seriously, please give this book to some who is going to use it.
All I am telling you is what I have learned the hard way. A smart person learns from her own mistakes. A wise person learns from the mistakes of others.
Accumulation is one of two varieties of sideways markets. You’ll have an easy time knowing the difference once you understand the psychology behind it. Accumulation is the quiet market – it’s on the back burner. There’s likely little news or traders are waiting on news and no one wants to be the tall poppy.
The range is narrow as the market creeps along sideways. What’s narrow? Remember, narrow is relative to the market’s current range and typical personality. Each pair has a unique price action behavior so what would be narrow on, for example, the USD/CAD can be very different when compared to the GBP/USD.
Where Is The market Moving To?
When you look at accumulation markets, the Wave should be sideways or traveling at what I call “three o’clock.†That’s right, just like the minute hand on your watch or a clock. When the Wave is traveling sideways you have a visual confirmation of the fact that prices are not trending higher or lower but rather have found a balance between support (buyers) and resistance (sellers).
Distribution is the second type of sideways market. The psychology behind distribution is not as simple as that of accumulation as the psychology behind it involves two distinct groups. Most commonly distribution is associated with the exhaustion of an uptrend and the turmoil often seen once a group of traders exit the markets as another group buys into the selling. What is different however is the fact that the move essentially is over or at stalling and therefore the market cycle “turns over†from the trend to a sideways direction.
Since there is not a bullish bias in forex as there is in stocks and futures, and by bullish bias I mean a predisposition to buy and look for an increase in the value of the market, you can also find distribution at the end of a downtrend as well.
Again, it is simply representative of one group of traders exiting the market while another gets in, believing the trend is still in place. Regardless of where the cycle occurs, it is very much the collision that creates a more volatile and wider range. When the market enters distributions, the main difference you will notice, as compared to accumulation, is the volatility.
The Wave will be sideways but can travel not only at the three o’clock angle but also at what is known as “two to four o’clock angle.â€
How To Trade Timing With Signals
Two to four o’clock angles are unique to distribution and are more easily identified by what they are not rather than what they are. Let me explain. If a market is trending, it will be doing so at either a twelve to two or four to six o’clock angle.
We already know accumulation is three o’clock. This means that its price action is sideways and the Wave is attempting to transition to three o’clock but is unsuccessful. We can be on the lookout for the two to four o’clock angle. It can’t be flat, and it can’t be trending. So essentially, it is a process or elimination, and we identify this two to four o’clock by what is not.
A few other things to look out for on sideways markets, whether it be accumulation or distribution, is solid support or resistance. “Solid†simply means that the touchpoints that make up the horizontal or static level are within five pips or less. More than five pips and the level can still be considered static, but now it would be “soft.â€
How To Move Over Profit
Transitions between any of the four cycles are probably the toughest to deal with. These transitions will look as though one cycle is ending and another is possibly beginning. This is where you are most likely to want to have some sort of definitive way of saying that a new cycle is now set. But it’s not that easy. It’s not going to be easy as my saying count three candles and if all three are traveling at the set clock angle you can say the transition is complete.
But I just did, but that’s not all I want you to do. It’s more than the mechanics of counting candles. You must develop a fell for the rhythm of the market, I know with time ad practice you will. The market is just for the mysterious. It’s not more mysterious than human behavior, and while humans are certainly entertaining, we’re nothing if not predictable, and thus so is the market.
Mastering The Trends
Mark up is just a fancy way of saying uptrend. Uptrends should be defined by support, which is a series of lower highs. Support is the key to maintaining an uptrend even within the context of pullbacks. Pullbacks or corrections are part of a healthy trend, and it’s these moves lowering within an uptrend that actually help perpetuate it. Think about it a moment.
If you are waiting for an opportunity to buy into an uptrend, first I must say “kudos†because most people just buy the new highs and that is not an effective way to enter a trend. But if you are one of those smart and patient few who wait for a correction to enter a trend, then you know by your acting – buying into the market – you are in effect supporting the uptrend.
An uptrend can be identified by the Wave traveling up at twelve to two o’clock. Once the trend is underway, it will probably seem unnecessary to confirm an uptrend with the Wave, but please do not let your guard down. It’s the slight nuance in the Wave, the transitions I explained earlier, that are so important to notice.
The initial sign of an uptrend, its very earliest states are probably the most difficult to recognize without assistance of a visual tool like the Wave. So make and keep the good habit: confirm all trends consistently – no matter how obvious the trend may look – with the Wave’s clock angle.
This is a great book by all standard, and I very much gladly recommend it to you.